To devise new developmental strategies and handle large amount of spatial and non-spatial data, it is inevitable to have a comprehensive information system which brings together the diverse information from variety of sources and provides vital input in the process of decision making/planning, exploitation and regeneration of natural resources.

Geo-SMART (Geographic data Synthesis, Modelling, Analysis, queRy and reTrieval ) is a customised Application and Query shell developed for aiding planners in quick decision making using GIS techniques. It is highly generalised and user-friendly package for resource management. Any database which follows NRIS standards can be integrated with Geo-SMART. It presents the data in more informative manner (visually and quantitatively) , provides various query facilities to extract information on single or multiple themes in conjunction with socio-economic data and provides various ways for analysing information and decision making.

Major functionalities of the package are –

Synthesis of Spatial and Non-Spatial data.

Analysis of single or multiple themes.

Analysis of Socio-economic data - Simple & Complex query, Percentage query, Quantile and Ratio display.

Generation of Land Resources action plans based on user defined criteria.

Cartographic Overlay & Identification of features.

Tile Display for displaying more than one theme at a time along with overlay, legend and zoom/pan facility.

Query on display, single / multiple themes and Socio-economic data

Statistics generation at various levels for selected themes.

Generation of map outputs at desired scale on A0, A3 & A4 size papers.

Satellite image display

Multimedia presentation

On-line Hypertext help on the shell.

Geo-SMART offers the following unique features –

User interface provided for customisation of spatial and non-spatial database.

Facility for status report generation for the validation of required database components.

Facilitates query on user freindly nomenclatures, hence eliminating the need to remember the complex codes or field names.

On the fly masking of coverges as per the selected bound - Administrative  boundaries,  watershed etc.

Automatic generation of legends, symbols and symbol updation facility.

Display of hierarchy of levels (classification) for easier selection of categories.

Display of index map and Scale at various levels.

Zoom by scale for display.

Interoperability with different  databases which are in NRIS standard form.

Query on non-spatial database through relations, hence does not populate the PAT file.

Selection of preferences - text and line color, thickness , patterns

Additional utilities - Distance measurements, proximity, location, text , flipping the display mode, viewing color chart, arcplot prompt, color chart etc.

1. Database Extendibility/ Modification: It is often required in the GIS projects to add more and more elements (coverages) or database item names / nomenclatures may undergo changes as the project matures and demand increases from the user. In such cases, the hard coded shell will not be able to handle the extended or modified database and will require software updation efforts. In order to take care of such situations, Geo-SMART provides flexibility of modification of database through customized user interface.
2. Reduction in database preparation load: The layers stored in the spatial database are required to be presented with proper symbols and legends which are generated automatically in Geo-SMART. Through these customized modules user can define/redefine the attribute item over which legend is to be generated.
3. User friendly nomenclatures: The main objective of the shell is to allow transparent access to the database without having to know the details of database elements, structure and organization. These modules facilitate the user to define a user-friendly name for a layer, non-spatial database table and different fields of the table. These names will be used throughout the shell as a representative of the layers, tables and fields.
4. Flexible link of non-spatial to spatial database: Provides the flexibility to define the spatial layer to be linked with the non-spatial database and the link item.